This invention relates to money-collecting devices such as those mounted in or attached to gaming tables in places such as casinos, for example. More particularly, the invention relates to a money-collecting device of a box-shaped structure having at its top a slot through which paper money or bills can be inserted in folded state by an insertion plate into a receiving chamber, and through which coins, tokens, chips, and the like (hereinafter referred to collectively as coins) can also be dropped to be collected in a door part of the money-collecting device.
Gaming tables used in places such as casinos for games of chance are generally provided with money-collecting devices for collecting and holding bills and coins. Ordinarily, a device of this character is mounted in the manner of a drawer below the table top of a gaming table and has through its top a money insertion slot which, when the device is thus mounted in place, is disposed immediately below and aligned with a similar slot opening in the table top. A bill or coin inserted into the table top slot therefore enters the device through the slot at its top. When a bill is to be inserted, it is laid across the slot opening in the table top and is thrust into and through the two slots by means of an insertion plate applied along a transverse line at the middle part of the bill. Coins are merely dropped through the slots. The money-collecting device, containing the bills and coins thus collected, is drawn out from below the gaming table and carried to an accounting station and deposited.
In a conventional money-collecting device of this character, however, the bills are collected therein in their as-inserted folded and disorderly state and, moreover, mixed with coins. Consequently, the work of taking these bills and coins out and processing them has been extremely troublesome and time consuming. Particularly in the case where the collected bills are to be processed in a bill processing machine, the bills, which have been thrust in their folded state into the device, must be unfolded and spread flat sheet by sheet and then stacked neatly. Therefore, the use of a conventional money-collecting device of this character inevitably results in a very low efficiency of money processing subsequent to their collection.